The modern practice of medicine poses a number of information-related challenges for clinicians to effectively deliver quality care to patients having an autoimmune inflammatory disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis. The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) estimates that approximately 50 million (16%) of people in the United States are affected by an autoimmune disease, while NIH more conservatively estimates that autoimmune diseases collectively affect approximately 24 million (7%). Autoimmune inflammatory diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus (‘lupus’), Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis (or other inflammatory bowel disease), psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, celiac disease, Graves' disease, and Type 1 diabetes mellitus, or hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) or its prodrome. Women are more commonly affected by autoimmune diseases than men. Often the autoimmune disease starts relatively early in life.
Currently, autoimmune disease-related healthcare expenses exceed $100 billion per year in the U.S. By comparison, cancer costs total approximately $57 billion annually. Autoimmune inflammatory diseases can affect almost any part of the body, including the heart, brain, nerves, muscles, skin, eyes, joints, lungs, kidneys, endocrine and exocrine glands, the digestive tract, and blood vessels. The classic sign of an autoimmune disease is inflammation, which can cause redness, heat, pain, and swelling. How an autoimmune disease impacts the patient depends on what organ system or part of the body is most-affected. If the disease predominantly affects the joints, as in rheumatoid arthritis, the patient may experience joint pain, stiffness, and loss of function. If it predominantly affects the thyroid, as in Graves' disease and thyroiditis, it may cause tiredness, weight gain, and muscle aches. If it predominantly attacks the skin and kidneys, as it does in scleroderma and systemic lupus, it can cause rashes, blisters, skin color changes, and progressive loss of kidney function. Many autoimmune diseases do not restrict their damage to one part of the body. For example, lupus can affect the skin, nerves, joints, kidneys, heart and blood vessels. Type 1 diabetes can affect eyes, kidneys, muscles, nerves, the vascular system and heart, and more.